Стихотворения

native dark swaying woods and native
rivers that sea-like foam and flow.

In a clattering cart I love to travel
on country roads: watching the rising star,
yearning for sheltered sleep, my eyes unravel
the trembling lights of sad hamlets afar.

I also love the smoke of burning stubble,
vans huddled in the prairie night;
corn on a hill crowned with the double
grace of twin birches gleaming white.

Few are the ones who feel the pleasure
of seeing barns bursting with grain and hay,
well-thatched cottage-roofs made to measure
and shutters carved and windows gay.

And when the evening dew is glistening,
long may I hear the festive sound
of rustic dancers stamping, whistling
with drunkards clamoring around.

<Ноябрь 1941>

451. THE TRIPLE DREAM{*}

I dreamt that with a bullet in my side
in a hot gorge of Daghestan I lay.
Deep was the wound and steaming, and the tide
of my life-blood ebbed drop by drop away.

Alone I lay amid a silent maze
of desert sand and bare cliffs rising steep,
their tawny summits burning in the blaze
that burned me too; but lifeless was my sleep.

And in a dream I saw the candle-flame
of a gay supper in the land I knew;
young women crowned with flowers.... And my name
on their light lips hither and thither flew.

But one of them sat pensively apart,
not joining in the light-lipped gossiping,
and there alone, God knows what made her heart,
her young heart dream of such a hidden thing....

For in her dream she saw a gorge, somewhere
in Daghestan, and knew the man who lay
there on the sand, the dead man, unaware
of steaming wound and blood ebbing away.

<Ноябрь 1941>

452. THE ANGEL{*}

An angel was crossing the pale vault of night,
   and his song was as soft as his flight,
and the moon and the stars and the clouds in a throng
   stood enthralled by this holy song.

He sang of the bliss of the innocent shades
   in the depths of celestial glades;
he sang of the Sovereign Being, and free
   of guile was his eulogy.

He carried a soul in his arms, a young life
   to the world of sorrow and strife,
and the young soul retained the throb of that song
   — without words, but vivid and strong.

And tied to this planet long did it pine
   full of yearnings dimly divine,
and our dull little ditties could never replace
   songs belonging to infinite space.

<Весна 1946>